A brief word for writers who are new to traditional (i.e. print) publishing: Editors consider every unnecessary keyboard stroke you make in your story like an incursion into their valuable real estate, so use your words sparingly. Sure, you need to include physical descriptions, back story, transitions between scenes, etc., but you should strive to only include text that moves the story forward. Excessive wordiness can turn off an editor very quickly and increase the likelihood of rejection of your manuscript.
If this already seems obvious, forgive me for preaching to the choir. But I’ve read a number of manuscripts by authors who have always previously published digitally and thus never had to worry about the cost of adding more space to accommodate their prolific prose. For instance, one writer I know who has self-published several novels has several sections like the following in each of the books. (I am paraphrasing, but this is very close.)
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” he answered.
“Nice weather today.”
“You’re right,” he said, glancing at the sky, “it is.”
“How’s your mom?”
“Oh, she’s okay. Can’t complain. How about your brother?”
“Pretty much the same.”
“Do you think he’s going to go back to work when the pandemic passes?”
“Probably, because he needs the money to buy food and pay the rent. But I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”
Now, this might be how actual people make small talk before they get to the meat of their conversation. But in a book, the author has just wasted half a page of space. The characters could have just as easily muttered, “The sun came up in the east this morning.” “Yup, it’s been doing that a lot lately.” (In fact, such a comment might actually tell the reader more about the character’s personality than the small talk above.)
It’s bad enough that the author risks losing readers with such babble. But the traditional publisher is also looking at the business aspect of this book. Including useless text means adding more physical pages, which means higher production costs and lower profits. Also, if pages of babble are lowering the overall quality of the writing, the book is less likely to generate the “buzz” that will lead to higher sales. And no matter how nice of a person you might be, if the publisher isn’t going to make a profit from your manuscript, you will get a rejection letter.
So when you return to your first draft to make revisions, keep an eye out for non-productive prattle. It may have helped prepare you mentally for the next meaty section of your story, but it might cause the reader’s (or editor’s) eyes to glaze over. Concise is nice.
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